Black Stars
by OneDarkandStormyNight
Summary: "The value of a life is determined by adding up all the little moments that wouldn't normally be noticed and realizing how very important every single one is." A series of drabbles/one-shots, mostly centered on Ten(too)/Rose. #3: Subliminal Messages. Summary: Four words: purple shirt, blue jacket. Set in Journey's End. Tentoo/Rose.
1. Second First Time

_I'm well into Season 6, past the whole River Song arc, and I'm still stuck on "The Doctor in the TARDIS with Rose Tyler" from Season 4. In my defense this is the first canon pairing I actually love since Dmitri/Anastasia. So...yeah. This is Tentoo/Rose, again; just a little fill-in moment for_ Journey's End_, in those few seconds when Davros and Ten are outside the TARDIS being all dramatic._

* * *

**Second First Time**

The TARDIS was recovered safe and sound, the Reality Bomb thwarted, Davros overthrown, twenty-six of the twenty-seven planets returned to their proper places, and the Daleks destroyed. They were there, eight of them, the Doctor's Children of Time, all reeling with victory, all awaiting his orders to get the Earth back home as well. Rose Tyler had seen and done more things since meeting the Doctor than most could in a hundred lifetimes, but she thought her heart had never felt more complete than in this moment.

But the Doctor was always full of surprises. When she instinctively looked to her left, she found him—the other one, the one in the blue—beaming at her like she was the only thing he was seeing in all the universe.

"Hello," he said.

He was so breathtaking that it actually stunned her for a moment. He always was, with his wild chestnut hair and his matching eyes, but this was different. His eyes were alive and shining, his smile big and bright, and there was a tiny bit of shyness quietly hidden in every feature. He was like a little boy meeting the love of his life on the playground…like an aged man finding the woman he loves after decades of separation.

It was like, for the first time, the Doctor was looking at her like she was the _only_ one, instead of another in a long, long line of people he would have to let go.

Rose was a little too overwhelmed, a little too dizzy, to really make sense of that at the moment, but she did not hesitate to speak to him, for the very first time, with a big smile that may have been just a little shy too.

"Hello."

* * *

_(Also the title of the series came simply because I happened to be listening to Avril Lavigne and I'm awful with titles.)_


	2. The Doctor in a Car with Rose Tyler

_I had to jump into an impromptu performance (literally) of a daytime TV detective when I dove out of the way just before an unknown car almost ran me over.  
That has nothing to do with this story. I just wanted you to know that it felt awesome. I do want to say that there is absolutely nothing graphic in this fic at all, but it's rated T because...you'll see._

* * *

**The Doctor in a Car with Rose Tyler**

It was only a matter of time, really.

"A car!" he was in the middle of exclaiming. "Whoever would have thought that I'd have a car—_me_ with a _car_?"

She grinned at him from the passenger seat, though he wasn't likely to notice, distracted as he was with trying to pay attention to the long country road and still processing the fact that he had to do things like that now (even though he'd had this car for three whole days already, and his official license for a month).

"A proper car," he went on, tapping the steering wheel with energetic fingers, "with a horn and a windshield and seat belts and things!"

"Speaking of which," she reprimanded, tugging on hers for emphasis and looking pointedly to where his was _not_ fastened.

"_Oh_, I told you, you don't need that," he assured her flippantly. "Nine hundred and five years I spent flying the TARDIS through the Time Vortex and look at me—I'm still alive, no missing limbs or anything. Not a single one of my regenerations had a crash…at least not one that left any permanent damage."

"Yeah, you're forgetting I spent a few of those years with you," she countered, "so don't even try that on me. We're in sheep country, you know—lots of the poor things out there with no idea _the_ _Doctor_ is on the road."

"You sound like your mother," he declared with a little sourness. "There is _no_ reason to worry. I've got it. See? It's all fine. I am going to get you there safely, Rose Tyler. I promise. Oh, and look!"

She smiled and rolled her eyes at how easily distracted he was (even more since becoming human, it seemed), and then her smile turned into a wince as some very wild violin-ish Celtic folk music started blaring over the front and back speakers. In an instant it was gone, and he was blinking at the now-silent radio with a slightly dumbfounded look.

"Look out!"

The Doctor looked up just in time to slam on the brakes, barely leaving a bit of space between their car and the stopped one in front of them. One of the sheep for which the first car had stopped baaed at them as it crossed the road under its herder's direction; it was hard to tell if the old girl was irritated at the painful squeal of his brakes or making fun of the frozen alarm on his face.

As for Rose, she threw her head back against the seat, the free, musical sound of her giggles sent the Doctor giggling breathlessly as well.

They laughed until the last sheep clopped over through the gate on the other side of the road.

"I called it," she exclaimed victoriously with a clap of her hand on the dashboard.

"It's just too simple, this thing," he declared as they started moving again, eyebrows knitted together while he glared at the gas gauge as though its simplicity personally offended him. "I'm used to zigzag plotters and timey-wimey levers and big important buttons and blinky little lights. This thing with its two pedals and boring switches is just too…confusing."

"Well," she answered, her voice quieter now as she looked at his profile with compassion (all of these changes hadn't been completely easy for him, no matter how happy he seemed), "soon you'll have your own TARDIS, with all of its buttons and lights, and we'll go soaring off across _this_ universe."

She didn't miss the tiny flicker of anticipation that danced at his mouth.

"In the meantime…"

Rose leaned up and turned on the radio once more, sure to lower the volume in a hurry, but not until she had changed it from the truly painful Irish jig thing that immediately filled their ears; between the stations that were pure static (due to the fact that they were in the middle of nowhere), the Doctor naturally inserted his personal commentary, as always feeling completely entitled to his rudeness, and she let him since those he was insulting weren't actually within hearing distance this time.

"Wow, that's just really awful, isn't it."

"Was that music or swearing in Dalek? I literally could not tell."

"I think she needs a doctor. I could probably fix whatever's causing her that much pain, or at least knock her out so that everyone else doesn't have to suffer with her. _Ha_!"

"That was definitely swearing in Dalek."

"Rose, my love, please don't. I don't think my weak human heart can handle hearing _Call Me Maybe_ from all directions in this confined space."

"No. No, _Stupid Hoe_ is not better."

"How can you _not_ like Dusty Springfield?"

Then she found it, and later she would wonder how she hadn't thought of it before.

"Oh my gosh!" she exclaimed with delight, freezing the knob on the station.

He cut wide, disbelieving eyes at her as the proudly disrespectful rhythm of a rap artist's voice sent the inside of the car thumping quietly.

"Have you ever heard this before?" Rose grinned at him, turning the volume up at the same time as the singer changed to a woman without dropping the background beat.

"Should I have?" was his reply, his curiosity peaked by her obvious excitement.

She didn't answer aloud, but her sitting back and watching him with laughter in her eyes was answer enough.

"…_Your touch magnetizing, feels like I am floating, leaves my body glowing. You're not like the others, futuristic lover."_

He heard Rose let out something between a snicker and a coo.

"_Different DNA, they don't understand you."_

That's when he figured out where this was going.

"_You're from a whole other world, a different dimension. You open my eyes, and I'm ready to go. Lead me into the light!"_

Rose's grin amplified by about a hundred watts when he met her eyes with a dreading look, and all suspicions were confirmed.

"_Kiss me. Ki-ki-kiss me. Infect me with your love and fill me with your poison. Take me. Ta-ta-take me. Wanna be a victim. Ready for abduction."_

That was the point when Rose burst out laughing, drowning out the next couple of lines of lyrics until she basically curled up in her seat and bit her woolen sleeve, brown eyes dancing under thick lashes.

"…_It's supernatural, extraterrestrial."_

He almost groaned out loud.

"_You're so supersonic."_ (And he couldn't stop a hoot of laughter himself at _that._) _"Wanna feel your powers. Stun me with your laser. Your kiss is cosmic. Every move is magic."_

By this time, her barely-covered chortling, coupled with the _complete nonsense_ of the lyrics and _ridiculously sexy_ beat, tickled him to the point that he was half-snorting back his own laughter and struggling to keep the wheel steady in his hands.

"_You're from a whole other world, a different dimension. You open my eyes, and I'm ready to go. Lead me into the light!"_

The whole next chorus was overpowered by their combined torrents of laughter and his outcries of how completely untrue this stereotype was…and then the real insanity started.

"_I know a bar out in Mars where they drivin' spaceships instead o' cars."_

"Martians wouldn't let this guy anywhere near their spaceships!" he cried out definitively, eliciting another half-wheezing giggle from his companion.

"_Gettin' stupi' high straight up out the jars. Pockets on shrek. Rockets on deck."_

"What does this even _mean_?"

"I don't know," she was admitting before he had finished, and even as she said it, another word hit him, in Kanye's unapologetic delivery.

"_What_ did he just say?" he nearly yelped.

When he looked at Rose to be sure he had heard correctly, he found her smiling at him—but it wasn't like any smile he'd seen before. It was a lot like the breathtakingly beautiful smile he was so used to seeing, the one that had captured his heart from the first day, before he knew how _fantastic _his life could really be, but this smile was just a little different. She was biting her lower lip as she smiled it.

Loud in their ears, Kanye hadn't stopped there.

"_Ima disrobe you, then Ima probe you. See, I abducted you so I tell you what to do. I tell you what to do, what to do, what to do."_

"Oh my god you _did_ abduct me!"

"I _did_ _not_ abduct you!"

But for some reason his stomach was fluttering anyway, just for a second, which only made him all the more utterly confused. Apparently Rose wasn't quite as confused as he was, though.

"Take me. Ta-ta-take me. Wanna be a victim. Ready for abduction."

She was singing it much too loudly and slightly off-beat. Of course she was; that was the point. But still, there was something sweet and real in her eyes, despite how completely bonkers the words were—to them, especially. In those (typically humanly specist) words there was a serious memory of that day, such a long time ago, when he had felt so drawn to the company of this bright and beautiful shop worker that he had actually turned around and come back in his TARDIS, and she in response had turned around and run to him, and then never let go, never stopped running. Somehow he knew she was remembering the same thing, and she was as happy as he was that it had been true…even if the writers hadn't _quite_ meant it that way.

"Boy, you're an alien, your touch so foreign. It's supernatural, extraterrestrial."

They were both on the verge of another bout of hysterics again after that first line, but then the music suddenly died out a bit, and Rose let her voice match the mood of Katy's…and he listened and understood why.

"This is transcendental on another level. Boy, you're my lucky star. I want to walk on your wavelength and be there when you vibrate. For you I'll risk it all."

And she only got past the first part of the chorus before he cut her off.

He'd always gotten good feedback before, but he had the feeling that in nine hundred years he'd never had such an avid kissing partner before today…and to be honest, he'd never been nearly as avid himself.

And in a parked car on the side of a road in _Sussex_, surrounded by _sheep pastures_, of all places, while the sun was going down over the green earth, listening to the universe's most unrealistic and offensive song about extraterrestrials.

It was only a matter of time before he had to admit how very human he was now, he supposed later, when he also had to admit that he _liked_ that song.

Really, really liked it.

**FIN**

* * *

_I'm not even going to get into what the person/people in the car in front of them must have been thinking through that whole song.  
I know, I know. You don't even have to say it. It's probably one of the most unoriginal ideas I've ever had, but it was completely necessary. I just had to, guys. I believe the term "sorrynotsorry" is appropriate here. What's really ridiculous is that I don't even like Katy Perry. (And yes, I also know that I may have tweaked the two versions of this song into one.) The song is E.T. by Katy Perry with the additional version featuring Kanye West, for any of you who actually might be living on a foreign planet.  
Only a few more weeks until the fiftieth anniversary! Who else is dying for the Eleven and Ten scenes? And I have the feeling I'm going to LOVE Twelve. Peter Capaldi has the crazy Doctor eyes. He's going to pull it off. I can tell._


	3. Subliminal Messages

_Apparently this is just going to be a Ten(too)/Rose series._

* * *

**Subliminal Messages**

He knew.

Maybe it had something to do with getting a lot of Donna's human instincts and feelings in addition to his own, or maybe it was just because he was very clever to start with, but he knew. He knew how it would seem to all the others, to be confronted with a second Doctor. He knew they'd not completely believe he was the same man, especially not right away, no matter how he looked or talked the part. It was the way their affectionate human minds worked.

So if he chose an outfit that coordinated with Rose's, it was pure coincidence, and not because he wanted her to like him straight away.

* * *

…_or because he wanted the original Doctor to see how brilliant they were together._

_"What's wrong with blue?" he says. Ha, ha. Always so innocent._


End file.
